I'm a Creative Director at Anthesis, the global sustainability consultancy. I joined through Given, the award-winning purpose agency Anthesis acquired — where I sat on the Executive Leadership Team and Board, held overall responsibility for the agency's marketing and communications and helped steer the business through the acquisition and out the other side.

I build teams. Across two agencies I've established creative, creative strategy and design departments where there was very little to start with — hiring, developing and leading dozens of people, growing capability and ambition in equal measure and helping grow one agency from 14 to 45 in four years.

But I'm a writer first. I started my career as an advertising copywriter, working for years as one half of a copywriter/art director duo – and I've never stopped writing. My favourite brief is the unpromising one: finding the compelling story or idea in the dull and writing the heck out of it — for everyone from the Royal Household through Peloton to Unilever.

I hold two Masters degrees: Biochemistry from Oxford, which means I can hold my own with scientists and sustainability experts before translating them for everyone else, and Illustration from Falmouth, with Distinction, studied part-time around the day job. For the last decade I've also licensed my artwork as prints and giftware — notably worn by Sara Cox on Saturday Kitchen Live.